


A Mirror Starkly

by starsoverhead



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Drug Addiction, Gen, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:52:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsoverhead/pseuds/starsoverhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The BAU has brought in the unsub, but the victim they saved leaves Reid shaken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mirror Starkly

**Author's Note:**

> My favourite band is Wolfsheim. One of my favourite songs by Wolfsheim is Heroin, She Said. This fic came from a long-standing love of that song. It also references some stuff I’ve written in the past but never posted. Also, there might be shipping in this if you squint. Expect foul language.

Reid couldn’t help but stare. The man had been the unknown victim that their unsub had been stalking through the forest - stalking, after he’d managed to break the unsub’s nose and run, and yet there was so little about him to say that he was a victim instead of an unsub himself.

He paced the interview room where they’d brought him, picked at his bandages from the EMTs, rubbed at his eyes with callused fingertips… He displayed every single fidget that Spencer had felt years and years ago while he’d been self-detoxing in the privacy of his apartment and yet Spencer knew that this detox, the detox they were forcing him into, was not voluntary. The man had been abducted, by all records, leaving his drug dealer after having scored his next day’s worth of heroin.

With his arms crossed over his chest (really, it was more of a self-comforting gesture than one of contemplation or anger), he watched the man move. Twitches, itches, mutterings and fighting with his hair—

He could see himself in the man in that room and he hated it. Tall, thin - though their interviewee was even taller and thinner than he was - long haired and restless. Reid had spent his life afraid of his own mind and there was something in those crazed eyes that told him that the man in that room had lost that fight some time ago. But the drugs…

The drugs made it better. He remembered that all too well. The drugs made it more bearable when the doubts wouldn’t stop and thoughts wouldn’t stop racing. It was a peace that just wouldn’t come otherwise, and his heart went out to the man who was in that tiny little room, clutching his own shoulders as he folded to sit in the corner. The temptation was there to go out and find a dealer, make a deal, and at least offer a night’s peace to the man.

But he remembered how that man, refusing to give his name, had faced off against Hotch in a way that so few had dared. Hotch had even turned the full force of his personality on the man and he had faced him without flinching, utterly unintimidated. “I know your type,” he’d said. “I know just who the fuck you are. You’re the kind of person who likes to loom. You stand over people, you glare at people, you use your size and your looks and your fucking perfect suits and you expect people just to cave because you’re the big, bad, goddamned FBI agent and your will is law, but it just doesn’t fucking work with me, so get the hell out of my face and get me out of here. You have fuckall reason to keep me in here.”

He wondered, for a few moments, if he would’ve ended up with that kind of willpower, that kind of ability to turn intimidation back on itself, if he’d kept using. If he’d gone down the spiral as far as this man had.

Biting his lips, he stood and walked over to the interview room, pushing the door slowly open after knocking. “Um. H-hey…”

“More goddamned questions?”

“No, I was hoping I could… get you some coffee or something. Or a warm place to spend the night.”

The glare that snapped on to him took him aback. First it stunned him that there was still so much animosity - but then it was the colour. His irises were a shade of brown that were so close to red that he almost thought he was being stared at by some kind of creature that didn’t have a basis in reality. “Oh, so you’re offering me pity. How sweet of you.”

“It’s not pity. Look, I—” He pulled out a chair, steeling himself. He knew this much. He knew that feeling, knew the resentment that came with being thought of as weak. “I’m a recovering addict.” Unbuttoning his sleeve, he started to roll it up, to show the track marks that had faded with time but were still visible if you knew where to look - and the man still sitting in the floor knew where to look. “It wasn’t heroin. It was dilaudid. So I know— I kind of know,” he amended, “what you’re going through. I can’t go out and get you drugs, but I can offer you a place to stay, or the address to one of the local methadone clinics…”

“You caught the fucker who grabbed me, right?”

Faced with the harshness of those words, all he could do was nod.

“Then either let me out of here or at least bring me my fucking guitar. I had it with me when the asshole grabbed me. I know you shits won’t give me any drugs so while I’m going through this, the least you can do is give me that.”

“Your… guitar?” Confusion streaked through him. Out of everything he could’ve asked for, from some kind of opiate painkiller to take off the edge to getting his stash back, he’d asked for a guitar.

“You wouldn’t understand. Just— either let me go or give me the guitar.”

“We could keep you on drug charges,” came a voice from behind Reid. Hotch’s voice. Immediately, though, the man’s eyes narrowed as his gaze shifted over Reid’s shoulder.

“No, you couldn’t, asshole,” he retorted. “I wasn’t arrested, I was recovered. When I was searched, it was done without my consent. I get a lawyer, I file a motion to suppress, suddenly you get charged for holding me without cause, and I get off scot free and you get to pay me for the case I file. Need I go on, motherfucker?”

Educated as to his rights. The profile Reid had in his head kept getting more and more confused. There were moments when a very keen education showed through the grime and the grime seemed more like a facade than the truth. There were more layers to this man than he was willing to show them.

“We can hold you for—”

The man interrupted Hotch without even a second thought. “If I were arrested, you could. I wasn’t arrested. You saved me from the fuckwit who was going to kill me. Right now, what you get to do is let me go, or try to arrest me for possession, and if you try that, I get to pull the searched-without-consent card.”

“I don’t want to let you go if you don’t have anywhere to stay,” Reid put in, his voice carefully quiet.

Their eyes met. And for a moment, Reid saw more than he had before. This man was smart. As smart as Reid himself was, he was sure, but the rough edges had turned him into this. His brows lowered, thoughts spinning as he asked, even more quietly, “Why do you want your guitar so much?”

He didn’t answer, but Spencer knew. It was an outlet. And without it, without either an outlet or the drugs, he would only get worse. So he nodded, standing, and reached to guide Hotch out of the room with him. “Did we recover the guitar?” he asked once the door was closed behind him.

“Reid…”

“He’s right. Everything he’s said, he’s right. We need to get him to a clinic or a detox somewhere, but worse is going on with him.”

Hotch searched his subordinate’s face for a long few moments and Reid made himself intentionally easier to read. It took a bit, but then Hotch was nodding before he walked away. There shouldn’t have been a sympathy between them, but Reid was still relieved when he could hand over the acoustic guitar. It made their fractious interviewee less angry and it filled the police station with music - surprisingly beautiful music - until the paperwork was filed and Reid had finally made arrangements.

When he walked back into the interview room, he was able to offer a feeble smile. “I found a place for you for the night,” he said. “You don’t have to stay, but I… It was my conscience. I at least wanted to… to offer.” Spencer handed over a slip of paper with an address and a name on it. “And I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For… everything.”

The snarl of words that came after that was unintelligible, but the man left the police station in a storm, guitar strapped across his back. Reid stared after him, hands sliding into his pockets to keep him from crossing his arms. His thoughts had to be along obvious paths because soon, Hotch was there beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

“You aren’t like him,” he murmured, his tone soft enough to keep anyone else from hearing.

“I—”

“I know that’s what you were thinking. But you aren’t like him. And we would’ve helped before you came anywhere near that stage.”

There were so many things he could’ve said. The man who had just left… He had put himself in that state. He had chosen it. But Spencer saw why he’d chosen it. There wasn’t any other way he could live. In that way, Reid wasn’t like him. So he nodded, looking over at Hotch and offering the smallest smile. Once more, they’d done what they could - even if it didn’t feel like enough.


End file.
